Online Marketing Blog

After a long and stressful week at the office it’s time to kick back, relax, and make the most of your weekend.  The easy option might be to stay in, order take-out, or watch Golden Girls reruns.  However, you might also be ready to blow off some steam.  Let’s face it, as attractive as a lazy night on the couch sounds, you know once you put in the extra effort a night out will be much more fun.

Comparatively, there are two ways to plan a social media strategy.

• Plan 1 consists of a lazy and solo mission where you simply share a few things here and there that are just a regurgitation of social media stories and promotions that your readers have already heard.

Finding a way to influence your prospects, customers, and company advocates is an essential part of doing business in today’s digital world.  Finding different methods of creating influence is essential with complex purchasing processes often present with B2B marketing.

Fortunately, we have the insight of savvy B2B marketers who are out in the field, developing, testing and implementing best practices that are willing to share with our readers here at Online Marketing Blog.

To that end, next up in our series of B2B Marketing expert interviews is PTC’s Alan Belniak.  As Director of Social Media Marketing, Alan focuses on product lifecycle management developing strategy and innovating the right mix of social media tactics to create influence and and value with their business customers.

Anyone actively involved (in a productive way) with social media as a marketing, PR or customer service communications channel started somewhere. Since it’s a social activity, that means a high degree of influence from others already mastering the channel. It’s no mystery that one way to quickly gain knowledge about and adapt to something new is to find, listen to and engage those that are already there – or at least further along than you are.

It’s not always a linear thing though. There are plenty of directions to go in the social media space and learning from others via participation and collaboration is where the real productivity in acquiring knowledge comes from. Different people focus their attentions, efforts and expertise in different areas and therefore, offer a different set of influences. A herd mentality towards social media expertise does not inspire innovation.